The book Regime Change was so alarming, I found myself skim reading it in order to stay composed.  I have just had a similar experience with The Cauldron, The Making of the Modern Middle East by Simon Sebag Montefiore.  It is brilliantly constructed, but it just goes from one act of perfidy or bastardry or savagery to another.  It is hard to find one character of substance or one place where an Australian could feel comfortable to live in.  It looks to be in a different universe and one condemned to eternal war.

The problems may be said to have started with the greedy, perfidious, and inept imperialism of the major European powers, but the horror shows start with tribal wars that become mixed with religious wars – and worse, schisms in religion. 

We tend to think that the basis of our civilization is the rule of law.  I have now come to the view that of equal if not greater importance is what we call the separation of church and state.  We may not be able to control God, but we must be able to contain his priests.  And almost all of the most poisonous doctrine and related political and geographic claims come from men.

The author has done a great job in organizing all this material.  And he has a turn of phrase.  He refers to Lawrence as a ‘Crusader scholar, skilled guerilla fighter and elegant writer…. a slick fixer, a Byronic fabulist and brazen self-promoter’   and a ‘subtle pixie’ … who looked upon a Feisal with ‘patronising hauteur and imperialist relish.’

The book suggests that the main protagonists about the Holy Land are bent on destruction of each other.

In Muslim societies, Islam remains indivisible from politics.

That may be the most important proposition in the book.  How do others – such as Israel – stack up?

The choice is between the vision represented by Teheran and that of the Gulf States: a liberal Islam allied with the West versus a radical Islam in confrontation with the West.  The Ayatollahs loathe the Gulf Arab Monarchies…almost more than they hated America and Israel, because they were the successful model of an alternative way of life.  [Compare Russia and Ukraine.]  Mojtaba Khamenei now calls his version ‘The New Islamic Civilization’ – and this radical Islamism is indeed new, but also repressive and ruinous, his program one of violence and misgovernance that has helped to destroy Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and his own country, killing hundreds of thousands, Arab and Iranian.

How does the author sum up the other side?

Israel is even more contradictory, both swaggering and insecure, over-reaching and under-prepared, secular liberal and militaristic messianic, spectacular in tactics, impoverished in strategy.  However superior its military, its way of war has become bombastic and bloody…. Whoever leads it, Israel has no choice but to defend itself against Iran, its belligerent satraps and their destructive mission. For all its power, eclecticism and ingenuity, it is possible the Judaic republic could be wrecked by an Intra-Jewish civil war, perhaps triggered by its religious-fascist politicians and overmighty paramilitaries that deliberately aim to isolate the state by launching regular pogroms against Palestinian civilians in a campaign to achieve Jewish supremacy in the West Bank.

Later:

There is no beast in the jungle so dangerous as a lame, hulking tiger: Iran….

The Gulf vision of Muslim society that is directed but tolerant and prosperous is a vibrant rebuke to Iranian ayatollahs, Hezbollah and Hamas gunmen who only offer killing and poverty tempered by the promise of paradise.

Strong stuff.  But as best as I can see, it is a fair go at describing the various shades of Hell on Earth in that part of the world, and it shows that it looks nigh on impossible for peace to settle on the Holy land – ever.

And it leaves those without God to wonder what God has done for humanity in all this tribal loathing and schismatic contempt that knows nothing of the Enlightenment. 

Most of us here in Australia have little understanding of this alien inhumanity, but we will be exposed to the cancer brought to our shores by members or supporters of the warring faiths or tribes.